A couple from New Hampshire gets turned down for their request to undo their divorce on December 2nd. The appeal was denied by the Supreme Court upholding the lower court ruling of rejecting the vacation request after 24 years of marriage.
The couple identified as Terrie Harmon and Thomas McCarron from New Castle were married in 1989 and decided to file a divorce in January 2014. The decree was finalized after six months rendering their marriage void.
Granting divorces in New Hampshire require no-fault base grounds such as irreconcilable differences which have caused the irremediable breakdown of the marriage for reasons such as impotence, adultery, and extreme cruelty of either party to the other.
The couple filed a joint motion to vacate the divorce decree last March reasoning that they have made up their differences and would like to undo the divorce. However, the New Hampshire justices provided a unanimous decision of refusing to grant the request saying that the law does not allow such reversal in their situation.
Attorney Joshua Gordon, appointed to defend the lower court's ruling, said allowing the couple's divorce to be undone could jeopardize the finality of all divorces. "Divorce is a uniquely fraught area of litigation. For divorced couples, it is often important to have the solace of knowing that their former spouse is indeed former," says Gordon about the case.
Divorces can be reversed for reasons such as fraud, accident, mistake, or misfortune and Gordon explains that none of the mentioned circumstances occurred in the Harmon-McCarron divorce and that any adverse financial consequences the couple claimed were "self-imposed" as an effect of their legal separation.
The lawyer also suggests that the reason the couple would not want to re-marry one another instead of attempting to undo the divorce is because of financial issues stating, "I think it was partly sentimental and partly that they had some business interests that a divorce and remarry would be more complicated than undoing the divorce."
New Hampshire is not the only state in the U.S. that does not allow reversal of divorces. New York and South Dakota also do not provide statutes to grant divorce vacation requests from former married couples.
